2009 02 10

A while back, I wrote about thesaurus.com and the stupid definition I'd found for oral. Well, I actually wrote them, and very politely told them that they are a bunch of asinine wankers (paraphrasing here) if they think "verbal" can mean "written". Surprise surprise - I haven't heard a thing from them, not even an automated reply. Wankers.

I'm not the only one who likes to have things spelled properly, and thinks that words have meanings that represent concrete things and ideas, am I?

I came across a posting on some other site with (some other) smart-arse writer saying he was looking for someone who knows the difference between they're/their/there, your/you're and some other common misuses. He was listing his age at not much under 40, which I thought of as a personal cut-off: anyone under forty is very unlikely to know the difference between syntax and sales tax. I didn't bother to check if he had a public school education or not. Like it or not, bad grammar and bad spelling are signs of sloppy thinking, and the current cult of SMS abbreviations (u = you, et cetera) is not really going to improve the language.

There is a difference between using a second language badly and not bothering to learn your first language properly, so I don't need lectures about that, either. Language usage changes with time; basic rules of grammar get stretched but remain the same. If you have a clear idea of what you want to say, and say it clearly and grammatically, most people will manage to get a clear idea of what you had to say. Surprising, but true. It's/its your/you're option to learn how to communicate. They're/their/there will be more on this cite/sight/site regarding language, I think it is more important then/than blogging about my toenails.